Lost My Religion

It's safe to say I grew up in a religious Christian home. My family was more on the new age meets old testimate side of things, but my mom was raised religious and kept her faith strong. But now, as a budding Buddhist (not quite, but we're a work in progress). It's been interesting being on both sides of things.

And I’m not saying either one is better than the other, but are notable differences between people raised in religion and continued to include it in their whole lives and people who weren’t. When I was a Christian, life revolved around the church and people from it, primarily studying different parts of the bible on different days of the week, and then Sunday, we sing about it (please, take my cynicsm lightly this isn't how I truly see it!) Now there is much more to it than that, and I do have alot of respect for the church, religion, and people who participate (you can still find me attending from time to time!) But it is all very structured and all very based on the word of God, (what happens when I memorized it already?!) And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this! If you're happy with it.

I was constantly questioning it all. God, Jesus, everything I was taught to believe in-, but no questions asked. I would remember forcing myself to remember questions way back as a child. Like, oh yeah, I'm going to get them next Sunday with this one. Anything from asking "why" to everything to stupid childish things like what about HAMSTERS, huh? Where are THEY in the bible?!

As I matured, so did the curiosity, some more valid questions like how did everyone manage to live until they’re like 500, 800 years old? Like DAMN, what diet were they on?! I know keto wasn’t around back then. I remember asking my sweet Aunty Lil that one specifically. She's like my google for anything religion and the secretary at the German-Mennonite church my mom, and then we were raised in for many years to give you guys some pretext. She started with, after a bit of a chuckle and some silence, “well, sweetie, you know life was different back then.” Saying things like diseases and chemicals made things weren’t around. She had a good point, but I don’t think Sam lived to be 500 by simply eating raw and living clean as today’s world would put it.

Another BIG one I couldn't get past at any age was, "how come some of the most dedicated to god people I know are gay and apparently “not accepted” in their religion?" Any god I was putting 100% faith in had to accept his people 100%. Many new age and non-denominational churches (of which I was attending) explain about context and how things are different, and it's the dedication to GodGod that matters now who they “lay with.” And that’s great, don’t get me wrong, adopting old traditions to accept the new age there’s nothing wrong with that especially, in this way. But- it wasn't always that way, and that was one of my standing arguments when people asked why I wasn’t a Christian anymore. Depending on who you were, you’d get the joke, well, “I’m half gay, so that means I believed in a God that half rejected me.” I see differently now. As I was still trying to accept a version of the Christian God for myself, I concluded that I don’t believe no matter what religion you ended up following, God isn't going to disown you for it. That, and many other things, came from the people who are miss leading religion. It was questioning what people in those times would do for health care that first led me to the things that would eventually cause me to lose- or change my beliefs entirely. Things like mental health problems didn’t exist, or what did they do when someone got sick back then? Premedication? My question had answers that led me to quickly find things like energy healing, herbalism, aromatherapy, crystals, meditation, all that naturalism covers. But once you’re into that kind of stuff, you can’t help but become a spiritualist by association. But not at this point of this story.

Before, I started following the rabbit hole, but after giving up my religion.

I didn’t do or think much into it. In retrospect, I wish that I had found the rabbit hole then, but no, it took me quite a few years. I wasn’t exactly looking very hard, I was more so looking in the bottom of bottles and bongs. I spent a few years not really doing or questioning anything, just working, drinking, and generally failing at life.

And it didn’t bother me; after all, from what I knew and understood, I was more comfortable not having a religion than ones I knew.

It's because my only problem with religion is the religion itself, not the existence of God, Jesus, or the bible. I am a believer in these things- to my own modified point, of course. But it's the restriction and a few other things set by religion that I have a problem with.

But isn't that all religion is, organized belief in the same thing? Different religions have different "ways" they practice the faith. It's the same idea, with different organization.

It's not that you have to believe in this way, or else you’re going straight to hell! But say sorry in a confessional that undoes everything. Religion is things like the rules and judgments that go along with faith. Things like lent, cultures that avoid certain foods like pork or beef, I get these things. But it's when religion starts to be a set of rules you live by, where you almost become like your living life in The Truman Show. I’ll keep the faith in God, the saving grace, and prayer. But they can keep their commandments, judgments, and rules.

When I compare life as a Christian to my life now, I feel that my mind was kept relatively narrow and not exactly by my own doing either. Not on purpose or by any conspiracy, but I felt as tho after I “woke up” and shown the behind scene's of your personal Truman show. Now, you are finally free to choose what you want to do.

Not to say you can't practice religion and live a free life- you absolutely can!

But once you realize you don’t have to go to church and follow strict rules and recognize that God will still love and accept you? You are much freer, and in turn, happier. You can still "serve God" but now, you’re doing it out of your faith and in your own way.

See, we are all talking about the same God, maybe except for the multiple gods' deities in various western religions. What they're calling energy, chi, the universe is what everyone else is calling GodGod. Me? I fluctuate between the universe and God. There are no rules.

There are still, though, many key differences that set everyone apart from each other.

First of all, you notice it in how they address God.

A practicing Christian will say something along the lines of “God is always with you.”

A practicing spiritualist will say, "Love and light, we are all gods.”

And everyone else is over there going, “What the fuck are they talking about?”

The church teaches God and Jesus almost like a father with a hippie son, and his crazy brother Moses is left to try and tell everyone else 'his word.'

God is an entity or guy up in the clouds that can be called upon anytime, and then okay, he’ll help.

Like all 5 Billion of his kids are all at once going “Daaaaaaaaaad!!!!!!!!”

And he’s up there trying to hear them all out.

No wonder "bad things happen to good people!" You know the saying, and what follows is angrily looking up with your hands out crying, “WHY GOD? WHY ME?!” Well no wonder, he couldn’t hear everyone at once! He’s like, SHIT, KAREN SORRY! I just got this message, are you alright? Ahh, I’m too late, aren’t I? Well, it's okay. I’m here for you at the end! Thanks, Dad.

Spirituality embraces God as energy, and actually empowers you with already having this energy, which is where we are all god thing comes into play.

They’re more like, “I’ve got this! I AM GOD!”

God is an energy we can use at any moment and are, in fact carrying ourselves already somewhere deep within all that other crap we call life and self. And if you go far into it, you get to the point where you realize this energy is in and around us, and we are all God. Don’t worry if that seems a little far down the rabbit hole; it is even for me, that’s because it's at the end of it.

At the end of the day, what is the difference, and why does it matter? It doesn't. It doesn’t matter in which way you believe or don’t believe. All I know is when I lost my religion and gave up God; I got closer to her.